What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Zombie_61]

Living remote. I did that often for my Dad. He pretended to be holding one and click it at me. Even moved the "rabbit ears" around or put tin foil on them for both of my parents when I was a kid. Knew how to work the console tv better than they did. Why am I talking about this in here?

Commiserating with your fellow former living remotes? For those of us above a certain age, I'm pretty sure this was a shared experience. I became our family's living remote control by virtue of the fact that I was usually closest to the TV, laying on the living room floor only two or three feet away. The television in our living room was connected to a roof antenna so "rabbit ears" weren't necessary, but when I got older and was given a portable TV in my bedroom they became an unfortunate necessity. Sometimes I had to hold them in such a way to get a half-decent signal that I couldn't even see the screen, so I'd give up and find something else to do.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If I had "Bill Gates money" I'd force some studio to make a film based on the DS9 continuum. I'd like the prophets to send Sisko back from "the sunken place" to face some otherworldly threat to both the Alpha and Gamma quadrants. Mostly an excuse to get the band back together. Never happen I'm sure... everyone's too long in the tooth now.. but a man can hope... dream... beg.

Worf

There's a documentary coming out within the next year or so on the whole DS9 phenomenon, with one of the segments being a "writer's room" session where the original bunch will plot out a hypothetical "eighth season" in which Sisko's fate will be resolved. Avery Brooks is conspicuously not in the documentary, but all the rest of the extended cast is, and all of the surviving writing and production people. Updates posted regularly at https://ds9documentary.com/!

I've already pre-ordered the DVD, and I urge all Niners to do likewise! It's the Way of the Prophets!

 

[Formeruser012523]

There's a documentary coming out within the next year or so on the whole DS9 phenomenon, with one of the segments being a "writer's room" session where the original bunch will plot out a hypothetical "eighth season" in which Sisko's fate will be resolved. Avery Brooks is conspicuously not in the documentary, but all the rest of the extended cast is, and all of the surviving writing and production people. Updates posted regularly at https://ds9documentary.com/!

I've already pre-ordered the DVD, and I urge all Niners to do likewise! It's the Way of the Prophets!

Oh, good gravy. *face palm* Find myself thinking, what's the point without Brooks? Will both Dax's be there?

@Zombie_61, I did the same thing. Was often told I would go blind sitting so close to the tv in the living room. Was given a black and white tv in my room. Yeah. Keep my tv off mostly these days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, Jadzia and Ezri are both on hand. Nobody's said what the deal is with Brooks, but there have been suggestions that his health is not of the best these days.

 

[Zombie_61]

...@Zombie_61, I did the same thing. Was often told I would go blind sitting so close to the tv in the living room...

I heard similar comments, but almost exclusively when I was watching the TV alone. If someone else was watching as well, apparently the convenience of having me to change the channel overrode any concerns about my vision health.

 

[Formeruser012523]

Yep, Jadzia and Ezri are both on hand. Nobody's said what the deal is with Brooks, but there have been suggestions that his health is not of the best these days.

This is where I type "Oy vey". WHY? Ezri? See, I even forgot her name, but I'm not one of the DS9 devotees.

I heard similar comments, but almost exclusively when I was watching the TV alone. If someone else was watching as well, apparently the convenience of having me to change the channel overrode any concerns about my vision health.

True. Funny how that worked. But I wear "coke bottle" glasses anyway, so, they can blame the tv all they want. I know that wasn't the case.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Rebel in Rye" 2017

A biopic covering J.D. Salinger's formative years as a writer. What it does well - showing Salinger's inner struggles to start and continue his writing career, the impact one writing professor at Columbia had on his career and his frenemies relationship with "The New Yorker -" is powerful and engaging, but the movie bites off more than it can chew with snippets of too many things - his rocky relationship with his father and siblings, his mother's support, his early struggles with women, his quickie marriage and divorce, his second marriage, his time in the military in WWII and his time in a mental hospital - resulting in an, often, disjointed and promises-not-met of a movie.

But the good is very good with a now hard-to-watch Kevin Spacey (before #Metoo, he half lost me years ago with his creepy performance as Bobby Darrin) giving an outstanding performance as Salinger's teacher, becomes mentor, becomes friend showing how those who can do and those who teach (well) can have an incredibly positive and didactic impact on those who do. Also in the very good category is watching Salinger and the editors at "The New Yorker," at various times, stalk and reject each with an almost Animal-Kindom-at-its-most-brutal quality to it.

However, the star of the movie is Nicholaus Hoult (the now grown-up boy from "About a Boy" back from '02) as the sometimes angry, sometimes confused, sometimes confident, sometimes diffident but almost always pulled-back-to-writing young Salinger. Despite the movie's aforementioned shortcomings, his performance draws you in and keeps your attention even amidst the movie's noted jumbled-and-incomplete story telling.

And it, like almost all period pieces today, has stunning sets, clothes, cars and architecture that are impressive and enjoyable to see in their slightly over-stylized / slightly too-perfect way. If I could have, my Fedora Lounge shopping cart would have been filled by the end of this movie.

It's a good not great movie, but if either Salinger or '30s/'40s period pieces are your thing - or even just movies that tell stories and not just blow things up is your thing - it's worth the time.

 

[Edward]

Few franchises fell off as fast as the TNG films. The only really good picture in the series was "First Contact," which stands out as a gem floating in a nebula of dross. If ever there was a sign that Trek had spread itself too thin, it was these movies. And it's unfortunate, because they essentially killed any chance of ever seeing any more of the 24th Century Federation, a time and place where are there are still a lot of good stories that could be told instead of endless lame reboots and prequels of the Kirk era.

IT's a shame, really. For me they were perfectly fine - just not Events. More like perfectly acceptable feature-length episodes of the TV show. Maybe they'd have been better received in that context. Perhaps, though, by the time we got to the TNG on the big screen, after seven or eight years of long series, we'd simply seen all we needed to see of them. Comparing this to the original Trek series, which was cancelled after only three seasons, with plenty more stories still to tell...

We showed "First Contact" to a sold-out house with Jonathan Frakes in attendance, and it was one of the most enjoyable shows we've ever had. Good old Number One made a few stops at the bar, and was in a pretty loose mood for the post-film Q&A. When he dismissed Picard as a "tea sipping imperialist," he brought down the house.

Ha! Not entirely fair, but pretty funny. I liked First Contact well enough, though it bothered me that they threw the Prime Directive away so easily and so hard. That was a major flaw in my eyes.

Having had only a few original thoughts in the past 53 years, I've noted several times here how many Depression Era movies were set amongst the upper class - way more than just the Astaire-Rogers films - with their luxurious homes, big cars, fancy clothes, opulent restaurants and general wealth at a time of abject poverty for so many.

Similar things seem to happen in later decades too - look at the Eighties and soap operas particularly. The eighties were a very tough decade for a lot of folks - moreso in many cases than the Seventies, at least here in the UK.

To me, this shows, as you note, people wanted escapism. My grandmother, who lost almost everything in the Depression, loved movies and told me she went whenever she could back then. I never asked her this - as she died when I was still just a kid - but I wonder if part of why she loved the movies is that she enjoyed seeing a world she could only dream about / escape to for a few hours before returning to her very tough life.

Escapism is absolutely the watchword. I have no doubt that's what is behind the popularity of superheroes and genre films / television currently.

That was my other grandmother. I remember her taking my sister and I to see the original Ghostbusters. She sat behind me (I'm the youngest). When Slimer showed up, she covered my eyes. Like that was scary? She would pretty much let me watch movies I was far too young to be watching. Like Howard the Duck, but it gave me a good hearty laugh at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy.

My parents took us to see it - and hated it. I loved it, though it was only re-watching it twenty years later that I realised both why my folks hated it, and that it was such a funny comedy. At the age of ten, and with no clue going in as to who Bill Murray or the rest of them were, I took it as a straight sci-fi.

Commiserating with your fellow former living remotes? For those of us above a certain age, I'm pretty sure this was a shared experience. I became our family's living remote control by virtue of the fact that I was usually closest to the TV, laying on the living room floor only two or three feet away. The television in our living room was connected to a roof antenna so "rabbit ears" weren't necessary, but when I got older and was given a portable TV in my bedroom they became an unfortunate necessity. Sometimes I had to hold them in such a way to get a half-decent signal that I couldn't even see the screen, so I'd give up and find something else to do.

Brings back memories of my first bedroom TV. B&W, dial operated, bought for a tenner in our Scout troop's annual jumble sale... It was a liberation being able to watch late and watch what I wanted to watch but couldn't in front of my parents. I saw a lot of really important stuff for the first time on that TV - The Wild One, Rebel Without A Cause, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, The Wicker Man[]/i], Twin Peaks (including that ending)... It's amazing how different some things shot in colour later felt when I saw them as intended, rather than via the effect of an old B&W picture.

There's a documentary coming out within the next year or so on the whole DS9 phenomenon, with one of the segments being a "writer's room" session where the original bunch will plot out a hypothetical "eighth season" in which Sisko's fate will be resolved. Avery Brooks is conspicuously not in the documentary, but all the rest of the extended cast is, and all of the surviving writing and production people. Updates posted regularly at https://ds9documentary.com/!

I've already pre-ordered the DVD, and I urge all Niners to do likewise! It's the Way of the Prophets!

I've yet to watch any Discovery, but it seems to me that the way forward for most all genre franchises is going to rapidly become streaming services.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Brings back memories of my first bedroom TV. B&W, dial operated, bought for a tenner in our Scout troop's annual jumble sale... It was a liberation being able to watch late and watch what I wanted to watch but couldn't in front of my parents. I saw a lot of really important stuff for the first time on that TV - The Wild One, Rebel Without A Cause, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, The Wicker Man[]/i], Twin Peaks (including that ending)... It's amazing how different some things shot in colour later felt when I saw them as intended, rather than via the effect of an old B&W picture....

Like you and so many of us here at FL, my introduction to old movies and old and (at the time) new TV shows was on an old B&W TV set as I wasn't allowed to use my Dad's color set. I often think, sadly, that had my grandmother not past away when I was still young so that we could inherit her TV, I might never have discovered old movies as I'd have had nowhere to see them.

Away from that, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my introduction to the original "Star Trek" was in B&W and I think it made it a more serious show for me as all its '60s pastel uniforms, eye make up, etc., and some of its cheesy technology look less goofy / even serious in B&W.

 

[Doctor Strange]

The Left Hand of God - 1955 drama in which Humphrey Bogart is an ex-GI who'd been leading raiding parties for a Chinese warlord who'd captured him during WWII, and who disguises himself as a priest in order to escape the warlord. The experience of being a missionary, while a giant lie, makes him a better person and he serves the community admirably. (That synopsis sounds kind of sappy, but the film isn't.)

Interesting late Bogie flick (I'm not used to seeing him in color and widescreen) with a good supporting cast - E.G. Marshall, Agnes Moorehead, Gene Tierney (who was on the verge of a mental breakdown; apparently Bogart had to feed her most of her lines). But one bit of casting that doesn't work anymore is Lee J. Cobb... as the warlord!

 

[Zombie_61]

...Brings back memories of my first bedroom TV. B&W, dial operated, bought for a tenner in our Scout troop's annual jumble sale...

My first television looked quite a lot like this 1950s Silvertone model...

...except that one of my uncles had either cobbled it together or found it somewhere. Same screen (black and white, of course), but the "case" was made from unfinished plywood (sanded a bit to avoid splinters), it stood on cut-down wooden table legs, and the "dials" consisted of one knob that turned it on and off and set the volume, and the other changed the channel; there were no markings on either dial, but I didn't care which channel my favorite shows were being broadcast on as long as I could find them. The speaker was set in an oval-shaped hole between the "dials", and was covered with some sort of flimsy material. Definitely a bare-bones set up, but it worked well enough for a number of years.

...I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my introduction to the original "Star Trek" was in B&W and I think it made it a more serious show for me as all its '60s pastel uniforms, eye make up, etc., and some of its cheesy technology look less goofy / even serious in B&W.

Both the aforementioned TV and the store-bought set in our living room were black and white; I didn't even know color TV existed until I heard my schoolmates talking about it. It wasn't until that cobbled-together set finally died and my parents replaced it with a portable color set that I finally saw those shows in color.

A little trivia, for anyone who might care. During the development of the Star Trek television series Gene Roddenberry had written Spock as a Martian, and they planned to use greasepaint to color his skin dark red. It was only after someone mentioned how many people still had black and white televisions, on which Spock's red skin would appear black, that he became a green-blooded Vulcan. To this day his "yellowish flesh" foundation makeup is identified by The Research Council of Make-up Artists (RCMA) as LN-1 (i.e., Leonard Nimoy 1).

 

[Edward]

Great trivia tidbit! I love the sound of your first tv too....

 

[Zombie_61]

...I love the sound of your first tv too....

To describe it as "rough" would be an understatement; it was as if someone built the cabinet out of whatever plywood was lying around, gutted a television, installed the components and got it working, then stopped short of doing any final sanding, staining/painting, or any other "finish" work that might have made it a bit more presentable.

It looked like something that might have come off of the set of a Little Rascals or early Three Stooges short; just as unrefined as my quick-and-dirty Photoshop recreation of it. And yes, my bedroom was painted that horrendous Baby Blue color.

 

[2jakes]

At my grandmother's house is where I
first saw a television. I was 4.
It was a heavy boxy black & white set with
"rabbit ear" antenna,no remote and only
two stations. Programing started and ended
with the National Anthem at midnight.

My uncle convinced her to do this:

Plastic "rainbow" sheet attached to the
front to give the illusion of "color".
It was awful.
But I never complained.
Kids didn't have that privilege yet.
I was content to watch Gene & Roy despite the
sickly colors.

My first love for black & white movies was
Charlie Chan films, Buck Rogers serials and the
Little Rascals shorts.
I wasn't aware that the "Wizard of Oz" was in
color until years later.

I once asked my grandmother about the 30s depression times.
Basically she told me it was hard times for all
but hardest on the "rich" folks who
lost everything according to the papers or radio.
She lived in a neighborhood where every one was in the same situation and did not see the contrast as much because they didn’t have much to loose .

My grandmother and I went to the movies regularly.
During intermission, the theater would sponsor a bingo game.
Winning card received a dishware or something that you see today in antique shops of mostly kitchen knick-knacks.

 

[Fading Fast]

...But I never complained.
Kids didn't have that privilege yet....

I saw a movie the other day, I think it was 1930's "Street Scene" or it could have been in 1951's "Love Next," but in some throw-away line a father noted to his wife that "the kid" was to do as told and not complain, period, full stop with the implication being that is how kids are raised.

Cultures have norms and while I have no doubt (and have seen evidence that) there was a wide range of how kids were raised back then as there is a wide range now, there is also a cultural norm or narrative - the "publicly acceptable" way to raise kids - that almost everyone, at least to some degree, represents is how they raise their kids.

Growing up, my parents - like most of the parents in my neighborhood - thought nothing of leaving their six, seven, eight, etc., year-old kid (not baby) in the car for - pick a number - ten, twenty or thirty minutes (not two or three hours) to run an errand or two. In the summer, the window was cracked. That was an acceptable cultural thing to do. Today it isn't and, depending on the facts and circumstances, could be viewed as abuse.

One of the fun and interesting things about old movies is to see those cultural norms change.

2Jakes' line, noted above, says it very well as, growing up, it wasn't even a consideration in my house that I would complain about almost anything. Gratitude or, at least, quiet acceptance was expected and while each house was different to a degree, that was pretty much how all but a few of my friends were raised*. Today, it seems the complete opposite where kids are encourage to - if not complain - at minimum, express their own point of view and objections with parents - publicly, at least - embracing this approach.

That's it, just doing what we do here: pointing out Golden Era norms and changes over time.


* Growing up, I was always uncomfortable with the few friends I had that were allowed to talk back to their parents because I kept expecting the parents to get angry and put a stop to it quickly. Even though it didn't happen, I - even to this day - am uncomfortable when a child talks back or is (what would have been when I was growing up) rude to his or her parents. I never, ever say anything to parents or kids (even ones I know well) when this is happening (not my business), but I am still very uncomfortable when it happens.

 

[2jakes]

I was the oldest. My mom would leave my sisters and me by
the Alamo that had a small park
while she went shopping across the street.
We had a Radio Flyer wagon which my youngest sister would ride along
with whatever purchase my mom made that day at downtown shops.
This was before malls were invented.

When I see young kids throwing a tantrum or kicking mommy, I feel sorry for the kid.
I blame the mother for allowing this.

One time I threw a piece of bread to
one of my sisters across the table when she asked for a slice.
She caught it and thought nothing of
it.
But my mother had other ideas.
I caught a slap in the face from her.
And I never threw another piece of
bread again.
My father was very easy going and
never put rules or spanked me.
Probably why my mom was strict.
They were always yelling at each other.
I didn't have to watch the "Honeymooners" on TV... I had the
real thing in front of me.


Luckily, I went to live with my grandmother.
She never hit me and I never misbehaved. I loved to please
her and enjoyed her stories she'd
tell me when she was a kid growing
up on the farm.

 

[Worf]

Living remote. I did that often for my Dad. He pretended to be holding one and click it at me. Even moved the "rabbit ears" around or put tin foil on them for both of my parents when I was a kid. Knew how to work the console tv better than they did. Why am I talking about this in here?

We had aluminum coated rabbit ears as well... LOL You're talking about it because it was a shared experience we all had as kids of a certain age and economic strata. Brings backs memories. Like every time I hear a "Mr. Softee" Ice Cream truck in the distance.... it just snaps me right back to home.

Worf

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

About a week and a half ago, Merrily We Live (1938), which looks like an unacknowledged remake of My Man Godfrey. Good screwball comedy, with phenomenally rich people acting all goofy like, and a nice dose of romance.

Then, due to enforced downtime as a result of minor (very minor) hand surgery, two Charlie Chan movies, The Scarlet Clue and The Jade Mask.

 

[Worf]

To describe it as "rough" would be an understatement; it was as if someone built the cabinet out of whatever plywood was lying around, gutted a television, installed the components and got it working, then stopped short of doing any final sanding, staining/painting, or any other "finish" work that might have made it a bit more presentable.

It looked like something that might have come off of the set of a Little Rascals or early Three Stooges short; just as unrefined as my quick-and-dirty Photoshop recreation of it. And yes, my bedroom was painted that horrendous Baby Blue color.

Stick some rabbit ears on that bad boy and your ahem... "television" would be the spitting image of that walking monolith from the sappy 1957 Sci-Fi flick "Kronos".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050610/?ref_=nv_sr_3

Eeegads man... how're you not blind from looking at that?

Worf

 

[LizzieMaine]

To describe it as "rough" would be an understatement; it was as if someone built the cabinet out of whatever plywood was lying around, gutted a television, installed the components and got it working, then stopped short of doing any final sanding, staining/painting, or any other "finish" work that might have made it a bit more presentable.

It looked like something that might have come off of the set of a Little Rascals or early Three Stooges short; just as unrefined as my quick-and-dirty Photoshop recreation of it. And yes, my bedroom was painted that horrendous Baby Blue color.

It might very well have been one of the many "kit" television sets that were popular with the Popular Mechanics crowd in the postwar era. These were being sold as early as 1939, but they really came into their own from 1946 forward once RCA came out with its popular 630 chassis. It not only built thousands of these sets under its own brand, it licensed the circuit to anyone who wanted to use it, and many of the kit sets turned out to be 630 clones. The 630 was a very very very good television set, but it was very complicated to build and it's probably safe to say that most of the kits that were sold ended up half-finished in a box in the attic.

Simpler kits came along in the 1950s, under the Heathkit and Knight-Kit brands, and many of those are still floating around confusing people who can't figure out what they've got. None of these kits came with a cabinet, so unless you liked the super-industrial minimalist look of an open chassis sitting on your table, you had to come up with one on your own. Most of them came out looking very much like this. The woodworking course cost extra.